Multiple AAA franchises regularly starring a female protagonists now and forever

[gargantual]

maybe this is coming from a fighting game, competitive game perspective but the way some gamers see it is that mechanics are the most direct diverse form of expression or identification with a character. Which is why I'm not too fond of AssCreed's largely thumb stick qte action.

When playing Tekken for example, the characters move set, advantages and weakness determine their character more than their appearance. Some have large hit damage, some are more nimble, some are inherently offbeat and unorthodox. Some consolidate impressive maneuvering into simple moves while others are a beast to discover their greatest faculties.

All that can be realized, and understood, and identified with completely indifferent of a character's gender. Diversity should start deeper than character facets, it should be the core of a game, and how the game world responds to different input.

Reason why Aveline in AssCreed Liberation is significant is how the world reacts to her costume change, and the limitation she faces in certain environmental situations, but not every game is going to communicate with that level of narrative depth.

Its important that we do remember the different types of games that were prevalent before the 7th gen, and how they were inherently different than the copy paste formats of modern AAA. Thats why I guess some gamers care more if the game is good rather than the look. Our marketing will be schlocky and titilating often, but the key question should always be how does it play?

Also on a side note: considering mechanics. I don't get why anyone would consult and say Mirror's Edge II's controls need to be different for women. Like what is that? As if it wasn't revolutionary enough doing first person parkour, before Dishonored came into the picture. The integrity of the game is maintained when the barriers to entry are the same for all players. I'm a lefty but I make do y'know.

 

[Syntax Error]

Hey if it sells, more power to them. If it doesn't we only got ourselves to blame.

Seriously , if games with a female protagonist sold as well or better than ones with male protagonists, we would see a lot more games with female protags. Hell female protagonists could even become the majority if it sold enough.

Maybe games with playable female protagonists would sell more if they were actually fun? It's like INNOVATION, really. You don't "innovate" for the sake of innovation so you have a new feature bullet point at the back of the box. "Diversity" is probably the newest buzzword these days and for what? To correct a perceived slight to the fairer gender? Make them fun first, and make sure that everything else you develop would be gender-neutral so you can plop whatever male, female or LGBT protagonist you can think of.

I agree with you 100%. I personally don't care who i am playing when i play a game. However, do you think there is a correlation between games having a female protagonist and games not being fun? I doubt a dev would make a game less fun because the game has a girl protag.

Well, it would really depend on the setting. Something based on actual history might not work though there ARE very influential women out there. Maybe if you could play as them? Fantasy and Sci-fi are the ones that give a lot of wiggle room, because you can forge a setting from the ground up. But really, videogames are first and foremost a form of escapism through power fantasies. If you are male and you can empathize with a female avatar, then that's a job well done on the developer's part.

But the short answer is if you think a game will be less fun with a female protagonist, then you have bigger problems. If a game is less fun because of the presence of an extra X (or was that Y? I forget ) chromosome, then the game isn't fun regardless of the protagonist's gender. Look at your mechanics and their implementation. Don't slap on a pair of "funbags" on your protagonist and call the game "fun".

 

[Pogilrup]

It is hard to measure the progress of sex and gender diversity in the videogames medium.

But personally I would see it as a milestone if we can get ad blitzes for big name games that feature a female protagonist, not named Samus Aran, Bayonetta or Lara Croft, not just one year or even one decade but every year til the end of humanity.

Now why AAA games? It is because characters of AAA games have a high probability of being ingrained in pop culture memory for years to come.

Many indie games may be successful but few that I know of can achieve widespread pop culture status. Mobile games can achieve pop culture status fast, but can they withstand the test of time?

Having many female protagonists in the medium is good, but having many memorable iconic female protagonists is even better as they would serve as a metaphorical anchor to inspire similar protagonists.

Hi , im a gamer, i play games because they are games. can you explain to me how it matters to a game what gender/species the character i am controlling is? because after 35+ years of playing games i havent seen one. if there were laws or active discrimination like there used to be you might have a point. but your just asking some poor company to fall on the sword for your pointless crusade.

not that it matters but why do you only care about getting enough women in? what about old people , fat people, ugly people, black people, or people that dont speak english.
its all irelevant to gaming ofc i just wonder why you discriminate

Whoa, first off, I'm not answering that load question "why you discriminate".

Second, video games can unconsciously perpetuate certain stereotypes. By simply lacking a sizable percentage of female protagonists in high profile games, one can interpret that as being "the stories of women are not important enough to be told in a high profile work in our medium".

In combination with possible unconscious prejudices ingrained in film, TV, and advertising, the resulting message can become "women are not important" or "women can only fulfill these roles and no more".

I know it seems farfetched, but that's just oppositional reading of media for you.

 

[WindKnight]

Hey if it sells, more power to them. If it doesn't we only got ourselves to blame.

Seriously , if games with a female protagonist sold as well or better than ones with male protagonists, we would see a lot more games with female protags. Hell female protagonists could even become the majority if it sold enough.

Theres been studys showing female led games typically get half the marketing budget that male led games do... so fewer people know about them, so they sell to fewer people... but its still judged as the female leads fault, not the lack of marketing.

 

[Syntax Error]

Hey if it sells, more power to them. If it doesn't we only got ourselves to blame.

Seriously , if games with a female protagonist sold as well or better than ones with male protagonists, we would see a lot more games with female protags. Hell female protagonists could even become the majority if it sold enough.

Theres been studys showing female led games typically get half the marketing budget that male led games do... so fewer people know about them, so they sell to fewer people... but its still judged as the female leads fault, not the lack of marketing.

And there's the rub. Were those actually GOOD games? Not even asking if it's awards-worthy, just if it's a good game. Also, what sales are you comparing it on to classify it as a success? Because damn near every release is a failure when compared to something like COD.

 

[gargantual]

Hey if it sells, more power to them. If it doesn't we only got ourselves to blame.

Seriously , if games with a female protagonist sold as well or better than ones with male protagonists, we would see a lot more games with female protags. Hell female protagonists could even become the majority if it sold enough.

Theres been studys showing female led games typically get half the marketing budget that male led games do... so fewer people know about them, so they sell to fewer people... but its still judged as the female leads fault, not the lack of marketing.

Lets not forget that Tomb Raider was declared a failure when it was recieved very well simply because it broke even or didn't make up for what was invested in it. Marketing for games is what really needs to be adjusted. Good games sell regardless of protagonists. Look at how far Lara has come, she's really the first 3D third person protagonist with a 20 yr history. Could've been a guy but it wasn't.

When looking at how DOOM blew up, you can see its more about the game. Now what DOOM made in total is nowhere near the millions that CoD and Halo earned but the rapid adoption of it was insane, because its gameplay like Wolfenstein 3D was rare and still very fun and loose compared to cover based shooting w/o tension and variety.

When they uploaded the first episode of DOOM to the Unv of Wisconsin servers as shareware. The servers ultimately crashed because the download requests. People just really wanted to have that experience.

Games can certainly do more to be holistic in their coverage of all people, but unlike film and literature its not an artform that's chiefly founded for the sole purpose documenting the humanities, even while it has the deepest potential to do so. Sometimes its skew presents a humorous contrast to our real lives, and the mechanics of the game have much more potential to be more psychologically oppressive to a player in what they reward and punish than its imagery in context. When we watch films and read books we genuinely wish a lot of different things or actions or portrayals would happen with characters, because our need to project our feelings into a big spectacular narrative is natural.

I often have those thoughts, but I have to balance them with what the game is trying to say through its own bent. I might like it, I might hate it, but the best thing to push for in narrative games is for different voices to get into creative direction and add their voices to the greater conversation than AAA's try to speak for everyone. With the latter screw ups are inevitable.

 

[zumbledum]

Whoa, first off, I'm not answering that load question "why you discriminate".

Second, video games can unconsciously perpetuate certain stereotypes. By simply lacking a sizable percentage of female protagonists in high profile games, one can interpret that as being "the stories of women are not important enough to be told in a high profile work in our medium".

In combination with possible unconscious prejudices ingrained in film, TV, and advertising, the resulting message can become "women are not important" or "women can only fulfill these roles and no more".

I know it seems farfetched, but that's just oppositional reading of media for you.

Well firstly, it's ok it was rhetorical, didn't expect a display of self awareness.

But most importantly, NO. look you can ask for laws to make women be treated equally, you can stand on your soap box all day telling us how and why women are equal if you want.

but you dont get to tell people what to think and you dont get to step on peoples freedoms , expression and creativity. if you want to make a game featuring women thats fine you go ahead, but you start telling people they need to start conforming to your world view and creating things as per your view of correctness , than you are no longer on the side of freedom but of oppression

 

[Pogilrup]

Whoa, first off, I'm not answering that load question "why you discriminate".

Second, video games can unconsciously perpetuate certain stereotypes. By simply lacking a sizable percentage of female protagonists in high profile games, one can interpret that as being "the stories of women are not important enough to be told in a high profile work in our medium".

In combination with possible unconscious prejudices ingrained in film, TV, and advertising, the resulting message can become "women are not important" or "women can only fulfill these roles and no more".

I know it seems farfetched, but that's just oppositional reading of media for you.

Well firstly, it's ok it was rhetorical, didn't expect a display of self awareness.

But most importantly, NO. look you can ask for laws to make women be treated equally, you can stand on your soap box all day telling us how and why women are equal if you want.

but you dont get to tell people what to think and you dont get to step on peoples freedoms , expression and creativity. if you want to make a game featuring women thats fine you go ahead, but you start telling people they need to start conforming to your world view and creating things as per your view of correctness , than you are no longer on the side of freedom but of oppression

In the end, this criticism is just advice. And when it comes to advice, one can either take it or leave it.

I'm not in any position to singlehandedly force my views on anyone.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Open world games, sports games (For he life of me, I could swear there was a sports game with gender select, but I sure can't remember it.),

It was one of the NHL games, I think the one that EA publishes. I don't know if it saw a return in subsequent installments, if it even has had subseqent installments. NHL is a hot mess in real life, and I wouldn't know since I don't play sports games unless I have a flatmate.

Sure, we have Saints Row, but sadly, where's Saints Row lately?

Saints Row IV was supposed to be the last installment in the franchise.

Of course, there's the whole fact that the games we might want to buy don't exist, like AC Unity, and Farcry 4 with female playable characters. <.<

I'd like to point something out about Far Cry 4 and its similar "its too hard to animate" excuse. In Far Cry 3's co-op mode, one of the playable characters was a woman.

Thanks for the info on the NHL series!
I think I'll track NHL 12 down. It looks like EA kept the option to play as a female into 13 adding female legends, and maybe into '14, though there are some complaints about the customization levels. Still, I'm interested in the series now, and am gunna look into it more. Hockey's a fun sport, what with the brawling.
I generally avoid sports games, myself, unless it's from Nintendo, or NBA Jam.
It's a pleasant surprise reading about the NHL series.

Yeah. I'm hoping for some sort of spin off from Saints Row. Or at least more games with the character customization engine. It's not up to par with WWE's character customization, but it's still pretty solid, IMO. I would't complain if it got cannibalized into new games.

Yeah, funny thing about Far Cry 4's excuse is that it's pretty similar to Far Cry 2's excuse.

 

[Dragonbums]

The problem is that sex sells

Honestly this age old phrase should simply be turned in to female sexuality sells. Because if it truly was a catch all "sex sells" than just as many products advertised towards women would feature bishounen boys, and men in tights. However this term has only ever been used when it comes to advertising to men. It only comes up for women unless it's specifically targeting them for sexual reasons.

Other than that women focused products never had any issue whatsoever successfully selling their product with heavy reliance on sex appeal.

And honestly the men who at least justify this phrase as legit are honestly admitting that as long as their dick says 'yes' to the product, their wallets will say 'yes' to it as well. Which is pretty fucking sexist and degrading. Even more so imo than women in boob armor. Because all it's reinforcing is that men are nothing but walking fuck desperate wallets that will buy anything as long as the implication of a good time is on the ad. They don't even have to really say what the product does out of the sheer basics.

I'm not specifically targeting you OP. But so much as voicing my general opinion on this matter on the topic of "sex sells" as a legitmate reason to have nothing but hot babes slapped on everything.

 

[Dragonbums]

but you dont get to tell people what to think and you dont get to step on peoples freedoms , expression and creativity.

You say this like videogame studios and devs today have free reign to do what they want in their games anyway. Which- if all the stories are to go by- they are very well having their creative freedoms restricted, stepped on, and ignored on a daily basis to appease the white bread CoD audience on a daily basis.

 

[Megalodon]

The problem is that sex sells

Honestly this age old phrase should simply be turned in to female sexuality sells. Because if it truly was a catch all "sex sells" than just as many products advertised towards women would feature bishounen boys, and men in tights. However this term has only ever been used when it comes to advertising to men. It only comes up for women unless it's specifically targeting them for sexual reasons.

Is Diet Coke targeting women for sexual reasons? Because to me it looks like they're using sex to market their product to women.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=diet+coke+advert&client=firefox-a&hs=Cf1&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ddKyU8zAOqKK7AbErYGYDQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1195&bih=662

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/diet-coke-blokes-an-evolution#image-rotator-5

 

[Dragonbums]

The problem is that sex sells

Honestly this age old phrase should simply be turned in to female sexuality sells. Because if it truly was a catch all "sex sells" than just as many products advertised towards women would feature bishounen boys, and men in tights. However this term has only ever been used when it comes to advertising to men. It only comes up for women unless it's specifically targeting them for sexual reasons.

Is Diet Coke targeting women for sexual reasons? Because to me it looks like they're using sex to market their product to women.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=diet+coke+advert&client=firefox-a&hs=Cf1&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ddKyU8zAOqKK7AbErYGYDQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1195&bih=662

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/diet-coke-blokes-an-evolution#image-rotator-5

Since I'm American, I have yet to see any of those ads here in the US. First time I saw them was in my gender studies class, so thanks for reminding me that it exists. (It was quite forgettable for me outside of a few laughs about how ridiculous it is. Also those girls are a bunch of dicks for doing that to him )

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. But at the same time nothing was really stopping Diet Coke from simply doing your average 'skinny girl who doesn't need a diet, being happy because she's skinny and on a diet and gets to enjoy her acidic drink". And it would be just as successful.

The ratio of sexual commericals for women in relation to everyday products than sexual commercials for men for everyday products is grossly skewed towards the male side than the women.

 

[Pogilrup]

This just will not die. I get the feeling people keep talking about this just so they can tell their friends how PC they are. What we need are good characters, I don't give a shit if they're girls and guys. I tend to like male protagonists more, but that's because I'm male and identify with them more. Pushing something down people's throat just for the sake of "social progress" makes it artificial and therefore far less meaningful than otherwise.

You see it as pushing something down people's throats, I see it as jump starting the engines.

 

[zumbledum]

but you dont get to tell people what to think and you dont get to step on peoples freedoms , expression and creativity.

If anybody is doing that, its game publishers, who gaff at the idea of publishing a game that is this or that, because the charts show them that dudebros who only buy Call of Duty and Madden want blah blah blah. I'm sure you heard about how the developers for Remember Me had to shop around to different publishers, pitching the game until they could find one willing to publish the game, and that they cited complaints from potential publishers regarding the gender of the main character. When a publisher already has control over a studio, whether through a contract or by owning them, they're known for causing all sorts of interference in the name of what some salesmen think it needs. I remember the project head of Spec Ops: The Line say that the multiplayer was literally a checklist requirement, required by the publisher (2K Games), and that it was a "cancer" upon the game. Yes, because the multiplayer is why that game was so highly recommended by so many gamers. Tomb Raider almost certainly suffered the same affliction as well, as the multiplayer mode was tacked on and subpar, and had some minor multiplayer DLC sold for more than it should have been, because the game needs multiplayer and some DLC. This almost certainly extends to single-player aspects designed for AAA games as well.

but you dont get to tell people what to think and you dont get to step on peoples freedoms , expression and creativity.

You say this like videogame studios and devs today have free reign to do what they want in their games anyway. Which- if all the stories are to go by- they are very well having their creative freedoms restricted, stepped on, and ignored on a daily basis to appease the white bread CoD audience on a daily basis.

well they do have that choice, its just they always skip over the fact that they choose to work on that project, that was the choice, you can work for yourself and do what you want or you get a job and do what they want. they had the same choice they then made it. look outside the trip A market and the indie market what do you see? people free to make whatever they want.

this thread/subject isnt about that , its about saying you dont have the choice in the first place you must make games according to this point of view.

 

[Pogilrup]

well they do have that choice, its just they always skip over the fact that they choose to work on that project, that was the choice, you can work for yourself and do what you want or you get a job and do what they want. they had the same choice they then made it. look outside the trip A market and the indie market what do you see? people free to make whatever they want.

this thread/subject isnt about that , its about saying you dont have the choice in the first place you must make games according to this point of view.

"Must"

One "must" make it according to this point of view or else what?

Besides, I would say "developers should" when it comes to these matters not "developers must".

 

[Dragonbums]

-snip

Now your just dodging. There have been numerous stories of devs wanting to get a game funded that either had to either change the protagonist, or tack on shit in their game that they didn't want or they can't make the game at all. Considering how much power AAA publishers have, that is the exact definition of "stomping on the creative freedoms of devs". But I guess this argument is only works when it comes to combating "SJW" whiners online who hold zero power over what a game will have whatsoever.